ktkenshinx wrote: ↑4 years ago
The Pioneer metagame is quite ugly, but as you suggest here, that's okay to a lot of players. We are guaranteed to see more bans before 2020's Pioneer paper events, and virtually guaranteed to see a ban or two tomorrow. Players will accept Pioneer bans because the format didn't start with a banlist beyond fetchlands, and we understand all formats are going to have some unacceptable cards. This is true of both lower power formats (Standard, thanks to Wizards' bad decisions) and higher power formats (Legacy; FoW/Daze/Wasteland/etc. can't make everything safe).
I think there's another indicator here as far as bans go, and this is one I think you're familiar with. Over time Wizards has restricted information more and more to prevent players from figuring out the meta game. As a game developer myself, including on MMO's in the past I'm familiar with this strategy. Balance isn't really all that important, as long as you have the perception of balance. Every move I have seen Wizards make in previous years has followed this philosophy. From restricting 5-0 reporting, to then curating lists of 5-0's to show diversity in decks, to trying to prevent places like mtgtop8 from reporting event results. With enough information manipulation, the need to ban cards can be hidden. I think a current example of this in action might be Urza decks, which data indicates may have been the best deck even in the Hogaak era and with proper information, players would have figured that out.
I also don't think it's a coincidence that as Wizards has taken steps to obfuscate more information, that it seems their internal testing process has gotten more lax.
Considering this, I have very little confidence in the Pioneer ban list. I think that it is going to wind up a format with far more ban mania than even Modern had in it's early years, and I don't think all of those bans are going to be warranted because perception matters more than actual results. As such, the format is going to largely develop boogeymen and demand action. This isn't helped by the fact that the MTG community has mostly decentralized in the past couple years, into deck specific discord channels, and Reddit in place of more traditional forums which expose players to more diverse sets of views. There's a flip side to this too though, where a card can be a legitimate problem but Wizards can't ban it because players haven't yet identified it as a problem.
I would like to be wrong here, but Wizards will need to change their actions pretty significantly for me to be wrong.
Re: team events
I've been thinking about @Azadan's points earlier regarding team formats. In summary, the idea is that Modern is necessary for team constructed events because you need something to pair with Pioneer and Standard (the obvious inclusions). I initially agreed with this, but now I don't think this is necessary. In fact, I think it is significantly more likely we see that third team format go in a different direction: Pauper or Brawl. Brawl in particular would further Wizards' plan to monetize all the older formats in a new form (true EDH Commander is tough because of the Reserved List), and would fit their pattern of "forcing" newer formats onto tables. A Pioneer/Standard/Brawl team event would be super sweet from a player and viewing perspective, and would shine the spotlight entirely on newer, contemporary Magic. This aligns with Wizards push across most fronts, and I'd bet on this team format before I bet on Modern having long-term team relevance. Pauper is another option for similar reasons, but it's less compelling than Brawl from a Wizards marketing perspective.
I had considered both of those formats as well. In the case of Pauper, I readily admit that I'm not familiar with the metagame or format staples. Depending on how many cards it would involve adding to Arena this could be possible. My initial thought is that this is significantly more work than adding Modern, but I have to admit that it's truly something different from Pioneer/Standard and it has the benefit of transferring well to paper as the costs are relatively low and it has no reserve list issues.
I think the biggest pushback against this is the message it would send in terms of the collectability of a players cards. Modern has always had something of an issue in terms of scale. The issue of reprints are tricky, and at current printing levels, if we fast forward 7 years, older Pioneer sets are going to have similar issues that older Modern sets have today. The solution would then be to replace Pioneer with something else, and that runs into significant issues for Magic's brand, unless they've moved primarily to digital at that point.
I think that Brawl is very unlikely to be a third format. Mainly because Wizards has been trying to keep EDH as a non competitive format. They're definitely exerting more control over the format than they did in past years, but I think they realize that pushing EDH to more competitive avenues, which is something that Brawl would begin to do (and that Tiny Leaders would have also done), would do a lot of damage to that format and start forcing a lot of bans that everyone would prefer to avoid.
Also, I think Brawl is too narrow a card pool. Maybe a Pioneer legal card pool for Brawl could work after a few more years, but it's not realistic right now. And there's still my previous point too.
This is an extremely interactive field, but it's incredibly unbalanced by some contemporary Wizards banning principles. 6 of the T8 decks are Brainstorm/FoW decks. 11 of the T16 decks fit that same pattern.
By every realistic metric, Brainstorm should be banned from the format based on metagame prevalence. The problem is that despite the way it warps the format it also keeps the format in check by allowing people to find sideboard hate. Banning Brainstorm would likely require another 25 to 50 bans to get the format in check.
As I've been playing with Once Upon a Time more, I'm starting to get similar feelings towards it that I have towards Brainstorm. I've been playing a lot lately with my own green Modern cantrip cabal of 4 Oath of Nissa, 4 Once Upon a Time, and sometimes a few other cards. It feels like playing a Legacy blue deck. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing yet, but it is what it is and I'm finding it's redefining how I think about deck building in Modern. If you check the developing decks you'll see a Painter's Servant brew I've been playing with. They're highly interactive board based decks with library manipulation. I don't think I have the best shell for something like that yet, but it's been an interesting area to explore and lets me address a lot of the formats problems.
Edit: There's one more point I would like to add to defending Brainstorm. It's often referred to in Legacy as playing a non blue deck as hard mode and it's true. In Legacy, my preferred deck is Nic Fit, and usually I play some weird green/black brews. Building these for a tournament requires understanding the current metagame, and knowing good play patterns against all the decks out there. It's not something you can pick up casually (Nic Fit in general is known as a deck that requires minimum 3 years of practice to get decent with). In contrast a lot of the major blue decks can be picked up and dropped on a whim. Essentially, Brainstorm lowers the non financial barrier to entry to the format and since Legacy doesn't get all that much play, that reduced barrier to entry is incredibly attractive to players.
if Modern is ever going to transition to a format that's like Legacy, it's going to require cards that can function in a similar capacity. I think Tron is a deck that does that, but I also think that the green cantrip suite is another set of cards that can help here (especially when your sideboard cards are creature based).
Essentially, my point is that Brainstorm does something that the numbers don't initially suggest, which is that it makes the format more accessible even though by the numbers Brainstorm based decks are clearly bannable. As evidence of this, I'll point to Andrea Mengucci doing well in this event. If you ever watch his Legacy videos and are familiar with the decks he's playing, his play patterns are rage inducing. He knows the format, but doesn't really know decks outside of maybe Delver, yet he's able to do well due to a set of cantrips which Brainstorm plays a large part in. If we want to argue accessibility, I think this is an important thing to consider especially as a format grows in size.